What is a placebo?

It has long been established that many diseases arise against the background of certain psycho-emotional disorders. And this means that the health of his body depends on the mood of a person, his state of mind, his conviction in something. Placebo is an attempt in practice to prove the correctness of such statements and to find an alternative to medical, therapeutic and surgical methods of treatment of various ailments. Read more about this below.

Placebo effect: what is the point and how does it work?

The question of what a placebo is can be answered as follows: it is a pharmacological substance (drug), a physiotherapeutic or other procedure that is inert in its action, that is, does not possess actual healing properties in relation to the patient’s illness. At the same time, the use of a placebo is based on the fact that the patient is convinced of the practical benefits of a remedy / method offered by qualified doctors to him. That is, he does not know that he was given no real drug.

The placebo effect is the very result of an improvement in well-being (or even a complete cure for the disease), which is noted by patients after taking a placebo.

The effect of the effect becomes possible due to three accompanying factors:

The hope of the patient for the beneficial effects of treatment is key. Moreover, this factor largely depends not only on personal characteristics, but also on the cultural environment that is native to the patient. In other words, the “faith in miracles” among residents of different countries / continents will be different.

Trust relationship between patient and doctor, respect for the doctor, recognition of his professional qualities.

Time. It provides a natural course of the disease, in which there are both moments of exacerbation, and moments of calm.

Placebo efficacy

Although placebo has been in serious research and development for more than 60 years, so far we have learned very little about it.

In particular, the truly convincing results of the effectiveness of this technique were not obtained, and it was not possible to establish any regularity in the manifestation of the placebo effect, its strength and duration.That is, in one case it is possible to speak about a very tangible weakening of the negative symptoms of the disease, while in the other the placebo effect may not appear at all or will be very short.

The method showed the greatest effectiveness in the fight against pain syndromes of different etymologies. A pronounced easing of pain in patients was observed in the first 2 hours after taking the imaginary drug / carrying out an imaginary procedure. However, in the overwhelming majority of people, the effect disappeared no later than in 24 hours.

In this regard, placebo drugs today are not welcomed by official medicine as a full-fledged therapeutic agent. After all, when using it, the doctor firstly deceives the patient, which is contrary to medical ethics, and secondly, refuses to use an effective, proven, safe medicine or procedure in favor of the drug / method, the effectiveness of which is highly questionable, thereby exposing health or even the patient's life is a danger. Thus, placebo is strictly prohibited for the "treatment" of deadly diseases.

On the other hand, doctors, according to surveys,Very often they resort to this method if it is necessary to improve the general condition of the patient, his quality of life, for example, by prescribing herbal antidepressants, vitamins, and so on.